This version is a complete and total rewrite, replacing the entire Superbase environment with the new SIMPOL environment. Almost all capability of the Release 4 Personal and Standard editions have been retained in this new, modern, and very flexible environment. Capabilities from Release 4 that are not implemented in 6.0.0 (but coming soon) include 1099 generation, mailing label generation, direct export to Excel for building history reports, credit card processing, the query engine enabling user-defined queries, and networking. These capabilities will be picked up soon in free updates to the program, probably timed with the release of the Release 6 Corporate Edition.

Default database, as shipped, is the Superbase MicroEngine (SBME), a fully relational object-oriented database. SQL support (mssql and mysql) is available.

New architecture is heavily multi-threaded, enabling an architecture that is open and flexible, permitting the user to jump from place to place in the program with no effort, and enabling multiple instances of the same form to be simultaneously open, displaying different data

New architecture runs on 32 bit or 64 bit Windows and Linux. Linux versions are not yet released. Whether or not a Linux release will be made depends on demand.

All reports except the monthly report are automatically exported. They are displayed in Notepad as tab-delimited data. Thus, the report results may be immediately saved off for import into a spreadsheet or any other program.

The security system was not ported; it was rewritten from the ground up. It is now much easier to understand and use.

Printer control is improved.

A small number of bugs were found in the Release 4/5 code base while the port was underway. All such errors have been corrected.

The preferences system (called Config in Release 5 and earlier) was not ported; it was rewritten from the ground up. It is prettier, more robust, and easier to understand than its predecessor.

Release 6 word processor support includes Microsoft Word, Corel Wordperfect, Lotus Smartsuite, and OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer

The Purge utility has been embedded in the main code base rather than being a separate executable. There were tradeoffs to this decision, but ultimately we decided to do it this way, and enable access to it to be completely controlled via the security system.

A sidebar menu has been added to all forms except the Home form, enabling a user to jump to any part of the program from any part of the program.

The tenant screening form is redesigned into a tabbed form. It is far less crowded than it used to be, and stores more information.

The ability to use a picture as a backdrop on the Home form has been deleted due to a problem with the user interface where the picture would want to hide the command buttons regardless of how it is set. We hope to restore this capability in a future version, when the problem with the user interface is solved.

The Release 6 demo program has the capability to be converted to a paid version via an online payment, without any reloading or loss of user data. The user need only make the payment, then copy/paste an authorization code out of the browser and into the program. The website has been upgraded to support this capability.

Release 5.1.02.02 (presently available for Enterprise Edition, Hosted Edition, and Corporate Edition)

- A couple of data format issues on some queries have been corrected. They came about because of changes in field lengths in the database definitions. We have restricted the length of the fields displayed in the queries and this fixes the problem.

- Some minor display format issues on the Late Fee page of the Tenant form have been corrected.

Release 5.1.02.01 (presently available for Enterprise Edition, Hosted Edition, and Corporate Edition)

- A bug in the Vendors section would keep a new vendor from being added directly from the Vendor form under certain conditions. This has been fixed.

- An Owner Payment would be saved from the Cash In section with a tenant number in the transaction if an apartment with a tenant in it was specified on the form. This didn't affect any of the bookkeeping; the tenant's balance was not changed and the payment wasn't being credited to the tenant. However, since the tenantnumber was there, this transaction would show up on the tenant's payment history report. This has been fixed.

Release 5.1.02 (presently available for Enterprise Edition, Hosted Edition, and Corporate Edition)

- The checkwriting module has been generalized and will now read a file that is kept in the etc directory if it exists. This file contains the check configuration information. This makes it possible to create any type of check. It is now also possible to set a flag in this file to not do MICR checks, but instead print onto pre-printed checks.

- The Security Manager has been altered to always create a password for the default user upon initial startup, whether or not the security system is enabled by the user. If the user does not specify a password, the username will be used for the password.

- A bug in the purge utility would not allow an Administrative user to purge buildings/units/tenants in the Enterprise Edition from any system where user level security was disabled. This has been fixed.

- A bug in the 1099 report would cause the program to exit with a fatal error in the corporate edition but not the enterprise edition. This has been fixed.

- The server modules for the Enterprise Edition and the Hosted Edition (PMGRSRV and PMGRCMD) have been altered so that they should never halt on an error. They'll write the error to the log file and keep on going. Under certain circumstances this can cause a log file to become simply huge, but it is better than having the server halt.

- The main server module (PMGRSRV) for the Enterprise Edition and the Hosted Edition would not check password length for passwords that are used to allow client access to files across the internet. These passwords can be set and changed by an Administrative user from any client computer. If the password was too long, PMGRSRV would halt. This was particularly a problem in the Hosted Edition since an error by one client would affect many clients. Now PMGRSRV will test the length and if the password is too long PMGRSRV will truncate it, taking the leftmost characters up to the maximum length. This won't prevent failures (access denied) due to password length when the client tries to access the file, but it will keep the server from bombing. Note that the PPCS server has a different max password length than the desktop datafile has and we can't change maximum password length allowed in the client program because this could cause lots of things to break very severely.

- New capability. Prior to now, the program has accepted one set of document templates and would always uses these. The templates could be different from computer to computer, but on any one machine only one set of templates could be used. This meant, for instance, that if you owned 2 strip malls you could generate letters and forms on one computer that had a letterhead for your management company, but you couldn't generate letters and forms with different letterheads for different strip malls, unless you used multiple computers. This has been changed so that form letter templates can be stored on a per-building basis, allowing different letterheads. By default, the system will use only one set of templates, but now you can change that.

- From the Tenant form, if you selected the tenant payment history command button, the resulting report would only work from the start date of the tenant's lease. Even if you changed the start date for the report from the requester that asked for that, it didn't work. This bug was introduced with Release 5.0; it works properly in Release 4. This has been fixed.

Release 5.1.01 (presently available for Enterprise Edition, Hosted Edition, and Corporate Edition)

- The calendar module would display today's date when opened, but if it was closed without first clicking on a date choice would return nothing. This has been changed so that the calendar will return today's date if it is closed without clicking on a date choice.

- Some minor form changes have been made to make things look neater, particularly in the Tenant form and the Vendor form

Release 5.1 (presently available for Enterprise Edition, Hosted Edition, and Corporate Edition)

- Prior to this release, dual writes for the enterprise edition were enabled in a configuration file and could only be disabled by changing the config file then restarting the program on the client. Now we have added a menu option that appears if it is relevant and will permit dual writes to be enabled or disabled from the main form. This option can only be enabled if a backupserver is defined, and can be used to stop dual writes if, for instance, the backup server goes down. Use this option with extreme care; if you need that backup database, you'll want the data to be complete.

- Under certain circumstances, when creating a new vendor, the new vendor would be created with a vendor account defined, and that account would be Account 0 (the built-in checking account). Under some circumstances, this would cause the program to prompt with the message "debit vendor account?" on the cash-out form, when such a debit would be inappropriate. This has been changed so that the default is to create the vendor with no vendor account defined.

- New Vendor information was not being immediately displayed on the Cash Out form when a new vendor was added, working from the Cash Out Form. Data was saved correctly, but was not being displayed. This has been fixed.

- More work has been done on the right-click "select by tenant" feature on the Cash-In form. This is substantially the most complicated form in the program, and the new enhancements make the right click feature more friendly and make it play better with the "Another" command button.

- Some forms have been slightly reorganized to give a neater appearance, most notably the residential Unit form.

Release 5.01 (presently available for Enterprise Edition, Hosted Edition, and Corporate Edition)

- "Stoploss" transactions of $0 were being reported in the Cash In module for residential tenants. This has been fixed.

- We found a potential hole in the Enterprise Edition security model in that there could be a way for an "outside machine" - that is, one not explicitly defined to our network - to gain access. This has been fixed by requiring a token which identifies the specific hardware by accessing some of that hardware's serial numbers. This token is passed to the server which stores it and uses it to validate later attempts to logon.

Release 5.00 (presently available for Enterprise Edition, Hosted Edition, and Corporate Edition)

- New Features. User configuration of forms is now supported. The user can change background colors, text colors, header colors, and font size/types for most locations in the program.

- New features. Commercial property support is greatly extended. Available now in the Enterprise, Hosted, and Corporate Editions, we handle basecost/stoploss computations, rent escalators, percent of retail leases, sales tax/value added tax. Rent escalators can be linked to the CPI or other index. Some of these features are being considered for migration into the Standard Edition as well.

- Keywords in the program have been generalized; rather than being text strings at various points in the program they are defined once as text global variables. It therefore becomes possible to change these keywords using either a personality module or by manually editing the file "keywords" which may be located in the etc directory.

- Relieved one of the few restrictions in the program. It historically has required that a folder called C:\SB30 exist. This remains the default, but it now can be changed using the paths file that is found in the \etc subfolder of ThePropertyManager folder. We have also provided the capability to change the location where the free format text files for tenants, buildings, units, and workorders are kept. They have historically been kept in the root of ThePropertyManager folder (and this remains the default) but the paths file now allows another destination to be specified. We are doing this in order to reduce the time needed to open files in very large organizations.

- New Feature. Historically, we have output reports and queries using the built-in Superbase editor/text windowing facility. This has had a number of problems with the most notable one being that some Windows systems could not cut and paste from that window for reasons that we do not understand. Beginning with Release 5, we now output all reports and queries to Notepad, which is a utility that is found on every Windows computer. There are many advantages, not the least of which is the fact that this means that all outputs are automatically exported.

- Released the new purchase order module as an option to the Corporate Edition.

- some portions of the code had been inconsistent in carrying tenant numbers around, which would result in a de facto (and artificial) limitation of 32,768 tenants in the system. In all cases, we have ensured that tenant numbers are stored and carried as signed 32 bit integers, not signed 16 bit integers. This gives a limit of 2,147,483,647 tenants which probably will be adequate. Should any users require more tenants in the system, contact us and we will arrange it by using a huge integer.

- Completely reworked the queries section to be many times faster and in some cases friendlier and more useful.

- Prior releases of The Property Manager have been optimized to minimize memory and disk usage. The reason is historical; the program began life at a time when memory was expensive and scarce. This has resulted in a sacrifice of speed, but the desktop version was fast enough that the typical user wouldn't notice this; it was fast enough that the user didn't have to wait more than a second or so for anything, except monthly reports which might take 10 seconds each. The implementation of PPCS networking has caused us to change the optimization in favor of speed, but now the program requires more RAM. The client-server mode of operation using PPCS across a LAN is presently almost as fast as the desktop version was previously for most functions, and the desktop mode of operation is (depending on particular function) anywhere from 20 to 70 times faster than it was. This represented a major rewrite of substantial portions of the code base.

- New feature. Implemented Peer-to-peer client-server networking, enabling networking across the LAN or across the internet without the use of a server operating system. The program now has the capability to work with a fully distributed database. The user can switch between desktop mode and client-server mode using one software switch.

- It should never happen that the files stddocs and extapps are missing from the system, but should this happen it is not necessary to force The Property Manager to halt, as it is necessary if certain other files are missing. The code has been modified so that these files being missing will not cause the program to halt.

Release 4.4.04

-It turns out that there was a way that you could lock yourself out of the system using the security manager. If you enabled security but did not provide a user password, you would be locked out. The system would not let you enter a blank password and would not let you in at all without specifying a password. This has been changed so that if you fail to enter a password the system will automatically enter your user name as the password. We also have tweaked the security manager to look and work better with 800x600 displays.

- New feature. In the Corporate Edition, the workorder organization has always been appropriate for residential properties. We have made some minor changes to it that make it appropriate for commercial properties as well.

- New Feature. In the Corporate Edition, if you have the accounting system configured to not co-mingle funds at any point, this requires you to have multiple "undeposited funds" accounts. Should you enter a payment and specify the wrong undeposited funds account, there was no way for you to easily move the transaction from the undeposited funds account in which it was located to the one it should be in. As a practical matter, this should be a trivial job, consisting of the electronic analog of picking the check up out of the wrong pile and setting it down in the right pile. This is now possible.

- There is apparently a difference between the Windows 2000 NTFS file system and the Windows XP file system which apparently is a bug in the Windows 2000 file system. This difference under specific conditions seems to cause the Win2K file system to not report an "End of File" when it should, and this was causing a hang in The Property Manager when printing tenant invoices. We have modified our code to deal with this situation and prevent the hang. This problem applies to Release 4 only; the Release 5 code is different.

Release 4.4.03

-An error in the right-click feature on Cash-In transactions for tenant selection would prevent proper selection of a tenant in Release 4.4.02 (but not in Release 5). This has been fixed by adding an index to the 4.4.02 Tenants file.

-An error in the Recurring Charges/ New Charge function would cause the program to provide a blank form if the user selected the check box to print the charge on the monthly invoice. This has been fixed.

- An error in the rent invoice section that would cause the program to try to invoke the external wordprocessor even if the internal invoice has been selected has been fixed.

-To better accommodate commercial properties, the Workorder has been modified so that the line "may we enter the apartment?" will not be printed out on a building of type MC (multi-unit commercial).

-There was an error in AutoUpdates for Semimonthly rents which caused autoupdates of payment due to stop upon year rollover. This has been fixed.

Release 4.4.02

- Added capability to select by tenant on the Cash-In form, rather than only being able to select by Building/Unit. If the user right-clicks on either the BldgName or BldgCode fields, a requester showing all current tenants known to the system will be displayed, and the user may choose one. If the user selects a building then right-clicks on a Unit field, a requester will pop up giving all tenants in this particular building, and the user may choose.

- Added capability in Extra Info to execute files that are loaded into Extra Info fields. This gives unlimited capability to store/display pictures, drawings, movies, text files, audio files, web pages, or whatever else the user chooses to link to a tenant, building, or unit.

- When reviewing tenant credit card information, if the user changed the amount to be charged, the change would not become effective until the user had saved, then closed the credit card info requester, then reopened the requester. This is changed so that the change in amount takes place immediately.

- Incorporated the tenant screening module into the Standard Edition and higher, rather than having it as a stand-alone option. It now will generate leases, welcome letters, reject letters, and integrate the new tenant into the system automatically.

- Moved a couple of buttons on the Main Form for the Standard Edition without checkwriting. The only reason is to make the main form symmetrical

- In the corporate edition, if a user created a cash in category, transactions entered using that category would not update the relevant account balance. This is fixed.

- In the corporate edition with double entry bookkeeping enabled, the checking account balance would be improperly computed in the event of a many to one transaction (many cash out transactions to one check). This error has been there for awhile; we are quite puzzled about why no one reported it.

- In the corporate edition, when the user attempted to save a Cash-Out transaction rather than write a check, the system would (properly) inform the user that he was saving to a checking account; did he really want to write a check? If the user responded "yes" the program would neither save the transaction nor write the check to the queue, would wind up in an illegal state, and would then fail if the user selected any choice other than "exit" to exit the cash out section. This is now fixed. This feature apparently got broken in changes made for Release 4.3.

- If you entered the building form and scrolled through buildings using the selection bar at the bottom of the window, then left the building form and immediately entered the Vendor form and attempted to scroll through vendors using the scroll bar, the program would not scroll. This is fixed.

- The Personal Edition would show main form menu items for credit card processing, even though the user couldn't use those features. This is fixed.

- The Corporate Edition with double entry enabled would write a deposit transaction for zero if no deposit was collected from the tenant, when the new tenant was entered into the system. This will no longer happen.

- When reviewing tenant credit card information, if the user selected "charge now" for the tenant being reviewed, the tenant's credit card would be charged, and any previously failed transactions would also be re-run. This is changed so that failed transactions will only be run when the user says to do it.

- A situation could occasionally occur in the Corporate edition with double entry bookkeeping enabled, where entering a new tenant would result in the tenant being added twice. The second entry would show up as the current tenant for the unit, but the first entry would be there and could affect some reports. This has been fixed.

- The UnitName field in the Workorders form was only 6 characters long. This is too short. A user could change it, but it shouldn't be necessary for a user to change it. We have changed it to 20 characters.

- When doing multiple "retry failed transastions" for failed credit card transactions, all failed transactions would be retried, and all credit cards that could be charged would be charged, and this information would be properly reported in the transaction log, but only the first successful charge would br applied to the tenant's account. All subsequent charges would not be applied to the tenants' accounts, requiring the user to do it manually. This has been fixed.

- If a "retry failed transactions" was executed for failed credit card transactions on any day after the day the transaction was originally attempted, and if the system was set to generate balance due invoices for late fees (the usual case), the invoice would not be correctly generated (address information on the invoice would not be correct). This has been fixed.

- Added another credit card processing company (Xcharge) to the credit card processing module.

- The very first time the Corporate Edition went to generate a deposit ticket, it would not find the relevant subdirectory for deposit tickets since this subdirectory does not yet exist. It would therefore tell Windows to create the directory but would not wait for that creation to occur. It then would fail to generate the first deposit ticket, claiming "file not found" because of the missing directory. This has been changed so that the program pauses one second while the directory is created. This problem would never occur after the first time because at all subsequent times the subdirectory exists.

- On the Recurring Charge (to tenant) form, the Due Date field was labeled "Next Due Date" when it should have been labeled "Last Due Date". This is now changed.

Release 4.4.01

- If the Config Manager was run, and then the user entered either the Buildings, Units, or Tenants section and tried to use the Extra Info function, the program would hang and refuse to close the extra info requester. This has been fixed, and the fix has been rolled up into the demos and into all releases of The Property Manager effective October 7 2005.

Release 4.4

-The "extra features" capability had a bug that under certain circumstances would lock The Property Manager into a loop as the requester for the extra features refused to close when it should. This is fixed and the fix is incorporated in all versions of The Property Manager shipped after 3/30/05.

-Added the capability to fill out and store the "Memo" field on checks in both the Standard edition with Checkwriting and the Corporate edition. This feature has been rolled into all copies of The Property Manager shipped after 3/17/05

- New Feature: Added ability to generate 1099s for vendors and for building owners. Output may be displayed, printed, stored in a CSV file, or directly exported for mail merge.

- Elevated building owners in the system to where information is kept on them in its own file, which can be reached from the Buildings form.

- New Feature: Added capability to add arbitrary number of "extra features" to the Building Form , the Unit Form, and the Tenant form permitting the user to customize the feature table and information collected about tenants as required. Via the "extra info" button that is now on those forms, the user can add whatever is needed; list local churches, schools, particular utility companies, vehicle license numbers, or whatever else is relevant, and have it be available on demand and searchable.

- New Feature: Added capability to process credit card payments automatically over the internet, thus automating the rent collection process.

- In the Corporate Edition, with double entry bookkeeping enabled, if you wrote a check to an unknown vendor from the Accounts form, the Cash Out Form would come up, with quick vendors enabled, which would let you change your vendor information to any quick vendor while on that page. This is clearly undesirable. Quick vendors will no longer be displayed under this circumstance.

- In the Corporate Edition, with double entry bookkeeping enabled, when entering a new tenant on the very first save the deposit amount would not be saved correctly. If you saved the tenant with no deposit information provided, then came back later and added in the deposit, it was saved correctly. This is now fixed and the program will save the deposit information properly under all circumstances.

- Some errors in obscure delete features for the Accounts module were corrected. These deletes would rarely be used, but if you - for instance - deleted a tenant deposit from the system using the Accounts form, the balance listed for the Deposits account would be incremented instead of decremented. This also happened if you deleted a transaction from a vendor or a revolving charge account. It is now all fixed.

- Labeling on the "Building Type" requester of the New Building wizard has been changed somewhat to better reflect the behavior of the CAM system. If the user wishes to enter a single-tenant commercial property as a property that has CAM support and is carried in the system as a commercial property, then the user needs to enter it as a multi-unit commercial property with only one unit. Otherwise the program will treat it like a house, which is OK but not necessarily what is wanted. The labeling has been changed to make this explicit.

- The Building form has always assumed that a house is a special case of a multi-family. Specifically, a house is a multi-family with only one unit. This means that the Building form has always had a "multi-family" look. In recognition of the fact that many of our clients only have single family houses, The Property Manager will now, upon startup, determine if houses are the dominant type of building in the system and will then automatically display a form that is more appropriate for houses by default when the form is opened. Further, when the user scans through buildings, a house will be recognized and the form will change to the new "house" form on the fly. When a house is displayed, the "Towing Company" and "Manager" information is relabeled as "Remark" fields. This does not change any functionality or program capability, but will look a bit better for those clients who are mainly organized around houses.

- We have made some changes in how the requester for editing and creating new queries is brought up.

- We are now releasing The Property Manager Personal Edition. This version is a simplified variant of the Standard Edition. Most configuration has been removed, as have workorders. Expense accounts are set to match a Schedule E. Full upgradeability is maintained.

Release 4.3.02

- A computer crash at Just So Software caused us to have to recover files, and we managed to (without realizing it) restore a master copy of The Property Manager that had some issues and incomplete code regarding the mail merge features. This problem affects many users who purchased between the release of 4.3 and 4.3.01. We are not sure who, exactly, is affected. The maintenance release of 4.3.01 on the website is affected. All users who have purchase 4.3.01 are affected. Many users will not notice the problem, but some will notice it. The problems are all fixed in this maintenance release. We apologize for this.

- The security manager was refusing to show all the buildings to allow access control when there were more than 20 buildings defined to the system. This is now fixed.

- Adding the combo boxes to the new menus in 4.3 caused a partial breakdown of the security system when a user is on building restrictions. When a user is not allowed to access a building, that building should not be visible to the user anyplace in the system. It turns out that this user could see those buildings in the combo boxes, and could review the information about them. The user could not change this information, but still that was too much access. This is now fixed.

- the Depreciation/Amortization module was writing transactions for escrow account payments in the amount of zero for mortgages that were not escrowed. This is fixed.

- In the Corporate Edition, when starting a new general ledger thread, sometimes the beginning owner equity information that you entered would not be accepted, and an owner equity of 0 would be reported on the general ledger. This problem is related to an error in Superbase. It is now working correctly.

- On the tenant transaction page, if you entered a comment then hit enter before clicking on a control button, you would be taken to the next page of the form, which contains late fee information. You thus would lose the tenant transaction you had just entered and would have to re-enter that portion of the form and re-enter the transaction. this is now fixed and hitting "enter" will simply move focus back to the date box on the same page of the form.

- If no printer was connected to the computer, and the system was scheduled to do automatic updates, and the system was supposed to generate a recurring workorder, the system would write the workorder to the screen because there was no printer. This would have the effect of locking up the program and could not be overcome until a printer was connected to the system because every time the program started it would try to write the workorder. This is now fixed.

- From the Units form, if you selected "review transactions" then selected either a Cash Tranasction or a Workorder, then cancelled the resulting requester without making a selection, the selection bar would not be turned back on at the bottom of the window, and you would have to exit to the main form, then re-enter the building form to get the selection bar again. This is fixed.

- We realized that the zipcode kept in the building file is being kept as a number, which means that it works for the US but not for other nations that use alphanumeric codes. We have changed the data type to text, lengthened the field to 11 characters, and we have removed the index on zipcode since we weren't using it for anything.

-changed the currency field in NextNo to be 4 characters long rather than one.

Release 4.3.01

- New feature. Added recurring maintenance workorder capability. This enables recurring maintenance items to automatically have workorders generated at the appropriate times, for things like changing furnace filters, cutting grass, spraying for pests, cleaning gutters, etc.

- Since the new forms were added, if you selected a building from the building form using the drop down menu for building code, you would get the requester "invalid building name" which would force you to select twice, once from the drop down and once from the requester. This is fixed.

- Also since the new forms were added, it seems you couldn't change the building name. Now this is fixed, but to change the name you must first select the "Edit" button on the form.

- In the new building wizard, if the unit numbering scheme was unrecognized, when the wizard put up a requester telling you to manually enter unit names it would put up spaces for one less unit than it should. This is fixed.

- New feature. Added a capability to process interest on deposits. If the interest field on the Building form is non-zero, then the system assumes that this is the interest rate paid on deposits for tenants in that building. The system will auto-remind when interest payments are due, and will auto-pay those payments, when told to do so, and to generate a letter to the tenant so informing him.

- Added a "Comments" field to Tenant Transactions, which should allow clarification of some details of what is being recorded

- In the corporate edition, it had been necessary to stop and restart the package if you edited bank account file permissions in the Security Manager, invoking it from within The Property Manager. This has been changed so that it is no longer necessary to stop and restart the package.

- In the corporate edition with double entry bookkeeping enabled, making payment to a vendor account would cause the amount of the payment to be added twice to the balance listed for the account, even though the transaction was only listed once. This is now fixed.

- In the corporate edition with double entry bookkeeping enabled, making payment to a vendor account via a check out of a checking account would result in a check written for $0. This is now fixed.

- The rent invoice function has been upgraded to support an external wordprocessor document, similar to the eviction and late rent notices.

- In the network version of either the Corporate Edition, or the Standard Edition with checkwriting module, a file locking problem would result in only one user being able to use the Cash Out section at a time. This is now fixed.

- When security had never been enabled and currently was disabled, you could not erase the check queue in the Corporate Edition. This is now fixed.

- In the Corporate Edition, with double entry bookkeeping enabled, if you tried to issue a check from the Accounts section to an unknown vendor, the system would issue two checks - one from the Cash Out form into the check queue, and the other from the accounts section to be directly written. This is now fixed.

Release 4.3.002

- In the Corporate Edition, recurring expenses have heretofore been restricted to writing a check from the default checking account, no matter what account was set in the account field. This restriction has been lifted. The system will not let you choose to "issue check" from a non-checking account.

- If you tried to generate a building with more than 150 units using the new building wizard, where the unit numbering scheme was an unrecognized scheme, the new building wizard would fail. This has been fixed.

- As of Release 4.3 (with the new forms), when editing a recurring expense the vendor would not show on the form although this information was properly saved and would be handled correctly when the recurring expense was charged. This is now fixed.

- As of Release 4.3 (with the new forms), in the Corporate Edition, with double entry enabled, when writing a check from the Accounts form, the vendor would not be properly displayed on the Cash Out form when that form was invoked to enter the relevant information about the transaction. Also, it was possible to change the vendor from this form. This is fixed.

- When saving the Cash Out form with an unknown vendor, there were circumstances where the system would claim to have found the vendor in the vendor file when it hadn't. This appears to be related to changed behavior in a Superbase command after a recent update to Superbase. The problem is fixed and vendors will now be properly found or not found.

- In the Corporate Edition, when writing a check from the Accounts form, the program would fail after returning to the Accounts form from the Cash Out form and prior to updating account balance and check number information in the relevant account. This is now fixed.

- Some new logic has been added to the Accounts form to preclude a possible error where an account transaction is written to disk, but the update to the relevant account balance fails. Previously, if this happened (it never should, and it does indicate an error in the Windows file system, but anything is possible) the system would give no warning and the account balance would then be in error. Now, the system will give a warning and the account transaction will be deleted.

- Added the use of unique sequence numbers for Cash In transactions to the Standard Edition

- Changed a datatype in the Cash Out Transactions file from an integer to a long integer. This makes it consistent with the definition in the depreciation/amortization module.

- When we turned off the error reporting in Release 4.3.001, the "Bldg History" report broke, since it needed a file that we don't ship with the package. This report would test for that file, open it, then delete it. Then it would be re-created. Formerly, this would generate error messages the very first time the report was run as the system failed to find the file to open then delete. But the program would continue, and would create the file, and the error messages would never occur again. When we turned off error reporting, the system generated a fatal file system error (file not found) and shut down the program. This is now fixed, and the system will gracefully recognize the non-existence of the file and just create it.

- A minor date bug in the CAM module was corrected. On year rollover, in January, an error was generated. It didn't hurt anything but made the initial requester in the CAM module come up with the wrong date.

- Upon a bug report from a user, we reviewed the working of the Arbitrary Rent Income query, which gives a running total of rents and deposit forfeitures from an arbitrary starting date, and we realized that the query was set to only report positive numbers - therefore it did not report rents that were backed out with a negative entry. We don't recall why it was originally intended to work that way, but that way seems to be not the best way. Accordingly, we have removed the restriction to positive numbers.

Release 4.3.001

- A bug in the Config utility would prevent the Deposits Account Source and Destination from being displayed when the Config utility was started from The Property Manager. The information was being saved correctly, it just wasn't being displayed. It is now fixed.

- A bug in the corporate edition that would prevent the deletion of incorrect transactions in any account type other than a checking account, and would prevent balancing of any account type other than a checking account has been fixed.

- Henceforth, we are shipping The Property Manager with most error reporting turned off. Previously, we had shipped it with that turned on but we have been getting blamed for Windows errors. In the event of a serious problem an informative requester will be given the user, then the program will exit.

- In Vendors, added the capability to define a category for the vendor. By default, this category is one of the Cash Out categories, but the user may enter something different. This vendor will then be defined as belonging to that category. Also added the capability to do a "Category Search" of the Vendors, which will restrict the vendor display to only vendors that match the category. This will facilitate, for instance, finding a plumber that you have previously used.

- The Cash In form has been reorganized and has a new look, making it consistent with the new look given to the other forms.

- Added combo boxes to the Cash In, Cash Out, Building, Unit, and Tenant forms so that the user can select options via a drop down box. These combo boxes permit typing so the consequence is that the forms work (from the user perspective) exactly like their predecessors, except that the drop down selection option is available.

- Added a listbox to the Building form so that a tenant roster can be displayed directly for the building, when the building is called up.

- In Tenants, added the capability to store an additional tenant phone number (cell phone or whatever) and email address.

- A common user error in the Corporate Edition is to delete bank account 0, rather than rename it and reuse it. This causes the program to malfunction. Generally, the accounts provided by default in the system are needed by the system and should not be deleted. Accordingly, we have modified the Config utility so that it will refuse to delete those accounts and will prompt the user to rename them instead.

- In the Corporate Edition, an incorrect variable definition was causing account balance forward information (for general ledgers) to be stored without the cents. This is fixed.

Release 4.3

- For 1 1/2 years we have been chasing a subtle bug involving Win2000 and WinXP, that would occasionally cause The Property Manager to hang on the main form and refuse to respond. It was uncommon and we never could get it to happen here. Now, today 29 Nov 2003, we were chasing another bug, working on a Win2K system, and suddenly the program started to hang on the main form. So we were able to chase down the bug. It appears to be a bug involving Win2000 since it involved an infinite loop that should not have been and, when we ran file system checks, we found a problem with the Win2000 file system. Nevertheless, the conditions that led to the problem have now been positively identified, and we have added code so that the problem is FIXED. It won't happen again with this or subsequent releases. HOORAY!!!!!!

- In the corporate edition, the utility for managing the general ledgers (configgl) did not provide an easy way to initialize a general ledger, if it the user wished to initialize account balances to any balance other than zero. There is now a way to do this and the documentation has been updated.

- All forms have been reworked to give them a consistent appearance. We performed a market survey and have incorporated the results in these forms. Further changes are planned for future releases.

- We have added the capability to show a bitmap on the background of the Main Form. We are shipping a sample bitmap of the Chicago Skyline at night with this release; the user may change or remove this bitmap as desired in the Config utility. This was done for strictly aesthetic reasons.

- We have further tweaked our dynamic form resizing support (to support 800x600 resolution) because of evident differences in individual systems; this release should work without problem on any system.

- Recurring expenses and charges have been extended so that the user can now select how many times the expense or charge is to be posted before expiring. When the expense/charge expires, the entry will remain and can be edited/restarted, but it will not be posted until this is done. The expense/charge can be set to run indefinitely, if that is what is desired.

- It turns out that you could enter the security system (by starting it from the Start menu) before The Property Manager was properly registered, and it would then do some initialization things that would have the effect of generating an invalid registration code, which would then prevent you from registering The Property Manager and force you to uninstall/reinstall in order to register. The Security Manager will now refuse to start unless the registration process has been properly completed.

- in the new building wizard, apparently there is some limit in superbase that only appears on certain systems, where you can only have 160 controls on a requester. This caused problems with the units definition requester if the building being defined had more than 159 units. We have changed the limit on the requester to 150 units, which should solve the problem.

- bug fix. In the new building wizard, if you tried to cancel the wizard from the requester where units were defined, the system would try to accept the units anyway and, if the units had not been defined (unit name fields were blank) the system would tell you over and over that the unit name was a duplicate and you could not do this. It would tell you for as many times as there were units in the complex. It is now fixed and will exit quietly.

- certain errors in the Windows file system apparently can create a condition where (under certain not totally understood circumstances) Windows will report to Superbase that it has written a record when it really hasn't. This cropped up occasionally on one of our systems in the Cash Out processing function. After extensive research and testing, we have chosen to implement a write-verify-rewrite (if necessary) model for the Cash Out record and for the CKTRNS record to eliminate the problem. This does not happen on a properly functioning Windows system, but since it isn't always easy to tell if Windows is functioning properly we added the capability.

- A bug in the budget module that under certain circumstances could cause the program to hang on the Main Form after the budget module exited has been fixed.

-further work was done on the main processing loop, based upon discoveries made regarding the bug in the Budget module, and discussions with the Superbase developers. The main processing loop now does some extra processing which *should* prevent it ever getting hung on the main form, pretty much regardless of what happens elsewhere in the program (we hope).

- began localization work. Most of the text for internal requesters has now been broken out into a separate text file called osl.txt. This enables customization of messages, will aid in translating the program to other languages, and facilitates configuration via personality modules.

- New feature. CAM support is added to the Corporate Edition and commercial properties are now fully and automatically supported. The CAM system will be invisible until and unless a commercial property is entered into the system.

- Added the capability to generate a Test Check from the Accounts/Checking page. This check won't be stored in the system and gives the user the capability to test check position on the printer without penalty in the accounts system.

- realized that automated reminder system would show all pending items, without regard to building access restrictions. Added building access restriction into automated reminders.

- rewrote part of the automated reminders system to make it about 20 times faster. This shows particularly when operating across a network.

- New Feature. Mail merge capability added using Word so that eviction and late rent notices can be batch generated. Wordperfect appears to be broken; to this point we have not been able to make this work with Wordperfect. We will add capability to use Wordpro in the next maintenance release.

Release 4.2

- When we went from Version 2 to Version 3, we essentially rewrote the package and at that time dropped (or more properly, didn't write new code for) 800x600 displays. We did this thinking that display format was on its way out. Well, we were wrong. We have restored 800x600 support to the package. This has been handled as a patch to 4.2; all copies shipped after 5 October 2003 have the patch. The 4.2 update on the website does NOT have the patch.

- New feature. In the security system it has always been possible to restrict access to building and unit information on a global basis, but it has not been possible to restrict access on a per building basis. This capability has been added. If security is enabled, individual users can be given or denied capability to access information pertaining to individual buildings. The default is to permit access to all buildings. If a user is denied access to a building, then no information on the building or on tenants (current or previous) who live in that building will be available to this user, and this user will not be able to enter rents or enter expenses for that building, except that automatic updates will occur on that building and recurring charges/expenses associated with that building will occur. The functioning of the selection bar will be somewhat restricted if the user is under restriction with respect to any buildings. Users who are under building restriction are not able to access the "New Query" or the "All Queries" buttons since this would give access to capabilities that would bypass the security.

-The change in the coding of the main form event handler for Release 4.1.04 created a problem with the automated reminder system. If you invoke the automated reminder system from the Utilities menu on the main form, you would be trapped in an error loop. It would invoke normally on startup though. This is fixed.

-A problem with how Superbase does things has been preventing us from implementing a context-sensitive help function in The Property Manager. The latest maintenance release to Superbase fixes the problem. Accordingly, we have implemented context sensitive help. This feature will only work if you have the latest release of Superbase.

Release 4.1.04

- we have reconsidered the working of the Accounts combo box on the Cash Out form in the Corporate edition. Previously, if double entry bookkeeping was turned off, program behavior reverted totally to that of the Standard Edition with optional checkwriting module, with respect to accounts. Most specifically, the user could not choose a bank account to charge a Cash Out expense to, and to write a check against. All checks would be written against the default checking account (account 0). Upon consideration, this is unnecessarily restrictive. Accordingly, the program has been modified and the user may specify the account to use when writing checks. Caveats: Must be a checking account, and the choice is meaningless UNLESS a check is written.

- An update to Superbase has caused an annoying incompatibility with existing forms; sometimes those forms show up with the text in strikeout mode. This doesn't affect functionality but does affect appearance. We have made changes to our package that should accomodate this problem.

- the same update to Superbase has evidently caused a minor syntax change in how one of the date handling routines works. Really, this tightens the syntax and makes it more consistent. But it caused a problem on the Cash Out form when the date was entered by itself and "edit previous" was selected. This has been fixed.

- in the corporate version, the program will now ask you for confirmation if, with double entry bookkeeping enabled, while doing a Cash Out transaction with the source of funds specified as a checking account, you specify that you want to "Save" the transaction rather than issue a check. There is nothing wrong with this, but it is not what you ordinarily would do. Now, you are asked and if this was an error, you can have the program go ahead and generate a check.

- In the corporate version, under Cash In Transactions, income categories "MISCINCOME" and "OWNERPMT" were not being saved properly if double entry bookkeeping was turned on. Essentially, these transactions were being recorded in the Cash In files, but not in the Accounts files. This would lead to an error in the general ledger trial balance, and would make it difficult to actually properly track such payments through the system. It is now fixed.

- In the corporate version, security has been extended. While it has always been possible to deny access for any particular user to the entire accounting section of the package, it has not been possible until now to control access for each user to each individual account. Now, based upon rules defined in the Security module, users may be denied access to particular accounts. If a user is denied access, then that account will simply not be available on any of the requesters or listboxes that permit that user to choose an account. One consequence of this is that, if security is enabled, only an Administrator can write or run any query that involves accessing any of the checkact or cktrns files. Some environments may find this to be restrictive.

- the event handler loop for the main form has been rewritten. We have received reports from the field about The Property Manager occasionlly hanging in Win2K and WinXP. This always happens on the main form, and the program won't respond to any input. We have never seen this problem ourselves. Much investigation leads us to conclude that this occurs when the Windows program mapi.dll becomes corrupted. In one extreme case, mapi.dll vanished totally from the system. An internet search shows lots of problems involving mapi.dll becoming corrupted, so we don't think this is our problem. Nonetheless, our clients are affected so we need to find a solution if we can. The Property Manager is an old program; the first section was deployed in 1992 on the Amiga using a language standard that dated back to about 1987. Between Release 2 and Release 3 of The Property Manager (in Oct - Dec 99) we completely rewrote the control logic of the program to modernize it and bring it up to the latest language standard that was new as of about 1997. All control logic was rewritten EXCEPT for the event handler loop for the main form, which for various technical reasons we did not rewrite. So the only remaining ancient code in the package controls the main form, and we have occasional reports of the package hanging on the main form. We hope that rewriting this top control loop will eliminate this problem.

- major hooks have been added to permit installation of a new depreciation and amortization package. This optional package will work with either the standard or the corporate version. With the corporate version it provides the remaining capability necessary to generate a complete balance sheet. With the standard version, the user gains the capability to track amortization history, or report on depreciation.

- In the corporate version, the General ledger will now report "Profit", defined as income minus expenses, on the report.

- In the corporate version, a sign error in the computation of the total Cash Out balance on the general ledger would lead to an error in the end balance, if there were any debits. This has been fixed.

- An invalid date error in the dialog for "report by owner" that is used in all versions for the monthly report and in the corporate edition for the general ledger has been fixed. This bug would not prevent proper operation of the program, but would prevent proper initialization of the requester.

- A bug on the Categories page of the Configuration Utility led to some peculiar behavior when selecting categories in the list box on that page. The feature was useable, but annoying and you had to be careful or you would get some unexpected results. It is now fixed, and the list box selection works as one would expect.

- Capability added to the Budget module. Now it is possible to reconcile a budget with actual expenses during the budget period, and compute/display/print the variances both as actual numbers and as percentages.

- Another invalid date bug has been fixed, in the Building History report section. It is fixed.

- On the Tenant form, when processing a tenant move-out, the system would give an "Invalid Date Format" for the move-out date, if the format was anything other than the default DD MMM YY format. This is now fixed.

- In the Corporate version, on the Accounts form, when selecting "Review Ledger" the date format to start would be provided in the default DD MMM YY format, regardless of what the user had set. This is now fixed.

- In the Corporate version, there was a subtle and pernicious bug that only appeared occasionally. If double entry bookkeeping was not enabled, and the user went into accounts and selected "Write Check" the check would be written, but occasionally the entry would not be made to the check ledger. This bug comes out of Superbase, and it has led us on a merry chase. We believe it is now fixed.

- In the Corporate version, if double entry bookkeeping was not enabled, from Cash Out, if the user selected "Add to check" and the Vendor did not exist in the system, the vendor would be added to the system but the check would not be added to the check queue. This would require the user to do an "edit previous" followed by an "edit" in order to enter a check into the queue. This is now fixed.

Release 4.1.03

- More date bugs cropped up in the Monthly Report section, due to the ability to change date format. They are fixed and hopefully this is the end of them.

- New feature: can now invoice for rents due. Days before due date to invoice is set on the tenant form, and invoices can be generated automatically (setting in config utility) or manually. This feature will be extended later when the capability to mail merge to wordprocessors is added.

- On the tenant form, the "Period" listbox was slightly overhanging the "last update" text box. This is fixed.

- in the corporate version, a bug in processing deposits, such that the deposit would not be properly updated if the deposit amount was being updated, has been fixed.

- some of the text in the rent receipt feature has been rolled out into a file called "RcptTxt.Txt" which gives the user some degree of capability to change the text that is printed on the receipt. Similarly, the Rent Invoice has text stored in the file "RentInv.txt".

- a bug that could corrupt the budget file in the Budget module has been fixed. This could occur when the user changed either the rents expected or the balance owed on the Budget form.

- a "Delete" feature has been added to the Budget module, permitting the user to delete budgets stored in the system.

Release 4.1.02

- Some errors in the computation of the running "owner account" total on the Building form, from the Cash In form, were corrected.

- Fixed a bug in the autoupdt module that cropped up on the year rollover to 2003. Any automatically updated transaction specified as "MONTHLY" was not updated, and would no longer be updated unless the last update date was manually changed by the user to be in 2003. This included rents due, recurring charges, recurring expenses. It is now fixed.

- Changing some of the date syntax to make WinXP happy caused the program to complain when running on other versions of Windows. We have made some further changes which appear to be satisfactory to the package on all versions of Windows. Should this prove to not be the case, please let us know. Specifically, syntax in generating forms using remote word processors had become a problem. Hopefully it is now fixed.

- The system wanted to print a receipt for any cash received, even washer/dryer. Now it will not do this, but will only print rent receipts. We may revisit this depending on user feedback.

- Another date bug cropped up, this time in the Deposit Ticket feature that is used if you run the checkwriting module, or the corporate version with double entry turned off. This bug would result in no date information being printed for a deposit item. It is now fixed. These changes we made to increase flexibility of date format are proving troublesome.

- New feature: Added support for Lotus Smartsuite WordPro 2000

- Tenant-Review Transactions-Payment History now displays the check number of the payment

- From the Units form, if you Reviewed a Tenant, then returned to the Units form, the selection bar vanished and would not return until you exited the building section and re-entered. This is now fixed.

Release 4.1.01

- fixed a bug or feature (your choice of terms) that would let you write a check for zero from the accounts form. This made no sense, and we have set a validation test to eliminate the possibility.

- fixed a date handling bug in the Accounts and Checking modules that would enable a blank date to be stored with a check, if the date was in the wrong format when entered by the user.

- fixed WorkOrder description fields so that they were saved even if you hit "Save" without first hitting "enter" after typing the information in. If you typed in a field then hit save without hitting enter, the field was not being saved.

- fixed Cash In section so that if you enter a payment amount or a comment and hit "save" without first hitting "enter" the last field entered is saved. IT wasn't being saved unless you first hit enter.

- Fixed bug that would trap you in loop if you tried to review tenant from the unit form when there was no tenant defined for that unit

- New Feature: Added capability to generate receipt for rent received. This feature can be enabled from the "Automation" page in the configuration utility.

- There had been a problem with Windows XP and the selection bar, so that you could click multiple times in order to get the record to advance. We think this is fixed, although to get it to work right we have to depend upon a particular Superbase command working incorrectly.

- on the building form, you can now use the selection bar to scroll buildings, then click on "review Units" and go to units form without first clicking in the BldgCode or BldgName fields and hitting "enter".

- changed the syntax of some of the date processing commands within The Property Manager to work around an apparent problem with Windows XP.

Release 4.1

- new feature: Can now handle recurring income/expenses

- new feature: Can now change the date format to whatever the user desires

- new feature: "Unit Feature Clone" wizard is added.

Release 4.0.02

- fixed a file locking bug in Cash Out Edit Previous that would affect Corporate LAN version users who had double entry bookkeeping turned off. The effect would be to fail to arrange the edit previous, and to delete the current building from the building file.

- Fixed a bug in Cash In that appeared after a Superbase update, which was preventing the user from saving a Misc. Income transaction without linking it to a tenant file.

- New feature: An "Add Building" wizard greatly eases the work of putting a building/units into the system.